“... they kissed again, the accursed assassins. He has tasted the ripe red lips of my Lucia, those lips that were mine, and mine only; he took them from me, and scorched and faded them with coarse, brutal kisses. I wish that in those kisses thou hadst sucked arsenic and strychnine, and that their sweetness had poisoned thee, vile thief, deceitful villain! Ah! they were sweet, were they, the kisses of my Lucia? Ah! they pleased you, and so you’ve taken them for yourself and gone off with them, vile thievish clod—brigand!”
A fit of coughing that lasted a long time choked him, his head rebounded on the pillow, and his chest heaved with a hoarse rasping sound. Trembling all over he grasped his handkerchief and expectorated, examining the handkerchief carefully with a hurried, frightened gesture.
“It is white,” he said, with a voice as thin as a thread. He fell back, paler than ever from fright, in his pillows, his chest heaving painfully. After this vehement attack, he was obliged to rest a little. She waited, watching his every movement: when he expectorated, a sense of nausea caused her to turn her head aside.
“Give me the blue bottle, with the spoon by it. It’s codeine.”
Caterina’s hand wandered over the table for some time before she could find what she looked for.... When she gave it him, he swallowed it, thanked her, and looked at her fixedly, perhaps because her trembling silence and her immobility began to strike him....
“It must have made a great impression upon you,” he muttered. “I was already upset, half dead, in fact, for I spat a little blood. I sent for the doctor and for Lucia, at the church of Santa Chiara, at once. The doctor came; Lucia didn’t come. They hadn’t found her at Santa Chiara. I was getting desperate; I went all over the house and turned it upside down. When, lo, and behold, a letter, brought by hand. I opened it, screamed, and fell down. I bit my hand and broke a pane of glass. I knocked the furniture about, all that had belonged to Lucia. If I could have got at her for a minute, ill and weak as I am, I should have strangled her. Then a fit of coughing came on, but I didn’t expectorate. Then a little scraping; it was red, red as flame. They have killed me, they have killed me....”
The fever of his complaint had left him in a stupor until the arrival of Caterina, now it was passing into the acute stage, as the temperature increased and the fever mounted from his chest to his brain. His ideas were becoming incoherent. “What happened afterwards, I don’t know. I sent for you, and the doctor came again. You see I threw the prie-dieu down; I wanted to kick it to pieces, but I couldn’t. She took away the Byzantine Madonna. She was pious, she was religious, she went to confession, she took the Sacrament; how could I tell that with all that she would commit this horrible crime! But ... you know ... they were a couple of lovers awaiting their honeymoon, like bride and bridegroom ... infamous wretches, assassins ... and to-night, to-morrow; while I lie here, dying alone, like a dog....” She shuddered, in terror at sight of the little mannikin wrapped up in a woman’s shawl.
“... I had always loved her,” he said after a pause, speaking in a lower tone. “I married her for love, because she was good and beautiful and clever, and spoke poetically; ... because she was unhappy in her father’s house. I didn’t mind her marriage portion being small. Some of my friends remarked at the time that women always marry from interested motives. I didn’t believe it. She wrote me such beautiful letters! Oh! she was a famous hand at letter-writing. She wrote to Galimberti, who went mad; to me, to you; and she wrote some to Andrea. She gave them to him in books, she put them under the clock, everywhere. I ought to have known that she married me for money. Do you know what she has taken with her besides the Madonna? Her diamonds, the diamonds that I gave her.” And a sneer of irony distorted the invalid’s lips.
“The diamonds, you know! My mother’s ... who was an honest woman ... that I had given her. She will wear them in her ears for him, and he will kiss her throat; she will wear them in her hair, and he will kiss her hair; she will wear them on her bosom, and he will sleep on that bosom. O God! if you exist—cruel God, vile God!—make me die an hour before the time.”
A gloomy silence reigned in the room after that imprecation. She shrank away with outstretched hands, in dread of the delirious sufferer in whose thoughts fever of blood and brain had wrought such terrible havoc, while it lent him a fictitious vigour equal to the strength of a person in rude health.